The Dutch health ministry now estimates over eight million vaccinations have been set in the Netherlands, of which 5.5 million doses have been given in local health board vaccination centres.

That means around one million doses were administered in the past week, and this is set to go up to two million a week in the coming period, according to the government’s coronavirus dashboard.

People born in 1967 and 1968 are now being called up for their vaccination – which will be the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine developed by the company’s Leiden subsidiary.

That call up covers 507,000 people, of whom around 425,000 have not yet been vaccinated, the RIVM said.

Meanwhile, the public health council has said that the second dose of the Astra Zeneca vaccine can safely be given to people between four and 12 weeks after the first and there is no ‘best moment‘ to do so.

The health board originally recommend giving the doses 12 weeks.

Website

RTL Nieuws has reported that a website set up to save vaccines otherwise destined to be thrown away has enabled ‘hundreds’ of people to jump the queue and get a vaccine early.

Health minister Hugo de Jonge has now withdrawn his objections to the website, saying that he would not place any obstacles in its way.

De Jonge told ANP on Friday afternoon that the website was obviously meeting a need. ‘However, I do not consider it to be the best way of dealing with the surplus,’ he said.

The website lets users find out if family doctors have any left over vaccines at the end of a day’s session which would otherwise be thrown away. They can then turn up in the hope of getting a jab.

New cases

In the 24 hours to Friday morning, 4,219 new cases of coronavirus were reported to the RIVM, down 433 on Thursday.

That takes the average number of infections in the past week down to 4,367 per day, compared with 6,202 in the previous seven-day period.